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Ezell Singleton, One Bad Cat, Jack

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The first time I heard about Ezell Singleton was at my barber shop soon after I had come to town in 1962. His name came up in an animated conversation about “Who Was the Baddest Athlete to Ever Come out of San Diego.” A dude who was wearing, as close as I can remember it, a red hat, yellow suit, blue shirt, green socks and pink shoes spoke through his gold teeth on behalf of Ezell, summarizing his multihued speech with “He was one bad cat, Jack!” Well, that’s the “G” rated version of what he said. If he had been like Isaac Hayes singing about Shaft, his back up singers would have had to sing “Hush yo’ mouth.”

His name would come up in picnic football games. Somebody would make a flashy move and get teased with “Who you think you are, Ezell Singleton or somebody!”   [Read more…]

A Thanks to the Veterans of Peace for a Nice Day

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This past Thursday was a mellow day for me, mainly due to a visit I made to a ribbon cutting ceremony for the grand opening of the Veterans Service Center at San Diego City College.

But I was already feeling pretty good before I got there, starting with being picked up by my girlfriend, if that’s what a 74 year old has. Anyway the ride, with that beautiful woman, on such a nice warm sparkling soothing easy San Diego day, had me ready for a good time.

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Making Peace by Learning the Skills to Practice Nonviolence

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As a teacher, vice-principal and school principal I more often than not had to sit with students of all ages, kindergarten to senior high, to help them get along with each other, to make peace.

I loved that aspect of my work, the nitty gritty of it, the getting to the bottom of why they felt they had to hit back or resort to name calling and ridiculing. I’d often ask them to think of what they could have done differently if the same troublesome situation that got them in each other’s face happened again.

It’s essential training since we live in a very violent society, one wherein: children kill children; children are abused in their homes; husbands batter wives and vice versa; metal detectors are used in our schools.   [Read more…]

For the Sake of Civility The U-T Needs to Change

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Hope on my mind

Hope comes easy for me. It can rise from the words in a kindergarten girl’s poem where everybody lives happily forever and ever, or it could come out of the energy of thousands of San Diegans standing in the middle of Broadway singing “Give Peace a Chance.”

I didn’t realize, though, how hopeful a human being I am until I found myself one day holding out hope that the San Diego Union-Tribune, a rag that, on good days, over the years, has made me gag, could change and become a factor in helping San Diego become all it can be.

I didn’t see this hopeful moment coming. I was leaving the Union-Tribune Building one day when it dawned on me that I had a smile on my face. And that had never been the case when I look back on all the times I’ve walked away from the place.   [Read more…]

We Need Obama to Pick Supreme Court Justices for You and Me

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I read a little essay the other day about Black clergy telling their flock not to vote in this election because Obama backs same-sex marriage – as though as president of the Land of the Free he should not politically and morally stand up for people who simply seek equality.

The flock was also told, in an effort to keep them away from the polls, that Romney is a Mormon, a religion one of them referred to as a cult, that once banned men of African descent, not to mention women of any descent, from entering its ministry. I couldn’t help but wonder, even if a brother was allowed in the priesthood of the church, what he’d say to a congregation of Latter Day Saints beyond “Damn, I must be at the wrong address!”

Anyway, it was all nonsensical to me and I can only hope that the flock takes time to reflect and realize that the proverbial Adam and Steve is absolutely no threat to the sanctity of matrimony in a world that claims “The third time’s a charm.” And isn’t it a fact that one religion demonizing another is like the pot calling the kettle black? We don’t need that.   [Read more…]

The Labor Movement Is Us

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Some people go on and on about labor unions as if they’re some kind of STD, so un-hip to the reality that the Labor Movement is us, We the People.

Who else labors?

As far as my relations with unions is concerned, if it hadn’t been for the San Diego Teachers Union I wouldn’t have enjoyed the time of a lifetime, a period of three years where I put work aside and took a “Parental Leave,” the first such leave taken by a man in the school district.

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How About Some Soul Power?

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I don’t know why, considering that the party always makes me feel like an extreme outsider, but I thought I’d look in on the Republican Convention. I tuned in just as Clint Eastwood was doing what seemed like a Comedy Club routine, acting like he was listening to an imaginary Barack Obama who was badmouthing Mitt Romney. We were to guess what the Prez said via Clint responding: “He can’t do that to himself. You’re absolutely crazy!” Well, you saw it.

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Still Loving San Diego and Its Children After 50 years

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Looking at a picture of me on stage at the Lyceum Theatre, honoring a couple of girls who had written a remarkable play, I couldn’t help but reflect on my fifty year love affair with San Diego and its children – going back regarding the city to when I first laid eyes on the place, after flying here with my University of Arizona Wildcat basketball team back in the 50’s. The raw beauty I observed on the ride from the Grant Hotel through Balboa Park on what was then 395 (now 163) absolutely mesmerized me. So it was easy for me, after earning a couple of degrees, to leave the burning deserts of the Old Pueblo and head to a town where there existed cool ocean breezes.

I arrived in a rusty 49 ford with my mother at my side because she was afraid I would fall asleep on the drive. My wife and kids had preceded us by a couple of days.   [Read more…]

Cesar Chavez’s Thoughts a While Back on What our Schools Are Facing Today

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 As we consider Proposition 30, we might want to reflect what Cesar Chavez had to say in Sacramento on April 3, 1991.  (A transcript of this speech is in the United Farm Workers Papers at Wayne State University.) A friend, David Valladolid, who is the President and Chief Executive Officer of PIQE (Parent Institute for Quality Education), emailed this vital piece of history to me.

This statement was made to Cesar:

“People may ask, ‘Why should the farm workers be concerned about the condition of public schools in California?’”

Cesar replied:

“Who do you think are in the public schools today in California?   Public schools serve more farm workers than any other publicly financed social institution in society. Public schools provide the greatest opportunity for upward mobility to Hispanics and to all ethnic minorities in this state.   [Read more…]

Still ‘Having the time of my Life’

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Looking at a picture of myself with a “friend” I realize that I’m having the time of my life, one of many “times of my lives.”

My childhood, was one of those times, minus, of course, Jim Crow clowning around a time or two, doing the boogaloo on my hopes and dreams but my family and friends and neighbors flooded me with powerful doses of love that countered such schemes.

And wowing Arizona basketball fans over half a century ago sure bolstered my ego and self esteem. That was quite a time.

Creating positive learning environments for thousands of children in San Diego who kept me young of mind has to rank among my finer times.   [Read more…]

Pondering the Definition of a Green Leaf

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 (Thoughts About Jerry Brown and Proposition 30)

I treasure such images as the one I saw earlier on this hot San Diego Monday morning: the vision of a nice number of San Diego City College students walking down hill in front of the B Building on their campus, heading for some trees for shade to listen to their governor, Jerry Brown, speak at a Press Conference regarding Propositon 30 – an initiative designed to raise as much money as possible to arrest the slow death of our schools. Their schools.
Nothing inspires more hope in me regarding the future of our species than seeing young people rising to remodel their world for the better. I hope that’s their intent, getting out there and talking to as many friends and family and others in their community as they can about how Proposition 30 is one of the most important proposals of our time, about how the learning needs of our children and young people or any active learner, for that matter, should be among our highest priorities as a state.   [Read more…]

As to Alaska, All I Can Say is “Wow!” (with a sprinkling of other “W” words)

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The other day we rented a car from Enterprise in Anchorage, Alaska, to drive south of the state a ways. Up to then the only words we had to describe what little we had already seen in the state they call the “Last Frontier” was: “Wow!”

And it had barely begun. Believe me. Those mudflats and sparkling waters, near where we hiked the day before, along with a stop on a mountain called Flat top, where cold winds gave life to our aging bones – all that was, indeed, “Wowful” but when I steered our midsized Kia onto the highway to Homer it was like rolling along a highway in the Twilight Zone, watching a world open up to us unlike any we had ever seen or dreamed of.   [Read more…]

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